by Rachel Caine
"He did his part." Simms's yellowed teeth flashed in a smile. "Don't worry. Mr. Ivanovich left and isn't looking back."
"Something happened to me while I was missing."
"You were treated for your illness."
"Something else."
Simms, for answer, removed a sealed manila envelope from his jacket pocket, unfolded it and slid it across the table. Not to her. To McCarthy.
McCarthy didn't touch it. "What is it?"
"Proof. I was hoping we might be able to avoid the unpleasantries, but you seem determined."
"You son of a bitch. You cold-blooded—"
"In private," Simms said. "As you said, it is a personal matter."
McCarthy shoved back from the table and stared down for a few seconds.
"I need someplace quiet," he said. "No surveillance. No cameras."
Jazz looked around and said, "Darkroom. Second door along the wall."
Chapter Fifteen
The darkroom was equipped with red lights—bright enough, but unsettlingly bloody. McCarthy ushered Lucia inside and closed the door, flicked the interior dead bolt and put his back against it. The manila envelope was clutched tight in his hand.
It was close quarters in the room, and even though it was well ventilated, the chemical soup of developer burned her nose and throat. Empty developing trays were laid out, and there was a clothesline of drying prints at the far end of the room, above the table.
"What in the hell is this about?" Lucia demanded. Her head was aching from the secrecy. "Why am I the only one who's safe? Ben, you have to explain this."
He didn't open the envelope. Instead, he said, "I was approached in prison after I got the beating, the one that put me in the hospital. I knew I was a goner in there, you understand? No way was I going to survive if the Cross Society decided I needed to go."
"You made a deal with them to get out of prison. I know that."
"You have to understand, Lucia. I didn't know you. I didn't know anything about you, except that the Cross Society had picked you. You were a name on a piece of paper to me."
There was a table at her back. The edge of it dug into her spine, low and cold. "Ben—"
"I would have agreed to anything to get the hell out of there. I'm not proud of that. I'm not proud of much in my life, but that was a low point." He tried for a smile, and it came out wrong.
She felt it coming, the way wild animals seemed to sense earthquakes on the way. "Ben, are you saying your alibi was a fake? Did you—"
"Kill them?" His blue eyes were utterly unreadable in this red light. They didn't look blue at all, just empty. "Couple of drug dealers who were responsible for at least half a dozen bodies, and those were just the ones they'd personally whacked? Who'd sold crack to ten-year-old kids and seventy-year-old grandmothers? Who raped when they wanted, stole when they wanted, and ran their block like some kind of prison camp? Or do you mean the girlfriend, who was so high she once sold her own two-year-old daughter to a pedophile to pay off a loan? Who couldn't even sober up enough to call the cops when her kid fell down the stairs and broke her neck, so she put her out with the garbage instead? God, Lucia. What do you think?"
There were tears in his eyes. Tears on his cheeks. She couldn't tell if they were from fury, pain or regret.
Or loss, the loss of what they'd nearly had, the loss of possibilities.
She didn't answer.
Eventually, he gave her the truth himself. "No. I didn't kill them, but God, I should have. The pictures exonerating me were legit. Still, the Cross Society would have let me rot in prison for something I didn't do. I figure they arranged the whole thing the first time so that I was in cold storage, so they could have me when they needed me."
He wiped his cheeks distractedly with the palm of his hand. Now that he'd started looking directly at her, he didn't seem to be able to stop. As if he was hungry for the sight of her, and knew this was going to be his last chance. "They wanted me to meet you," he said. "And they wanted me to get you in bed as soon as I possibly could." It hit her as funny, because she'd been braced for so I much worse. She laughed out loud, involuntarily, and covered her mouth with her hand. "That's it?" she asked, and swallowed lunatic giggles. 'That's their big master plan? Get us laid? You didn't even—"
She stopped. All of the humor fell away, down a black hole that didn't seem to have any bottom to it at all. "I was going to say you didn't even try," she said slowly. "But that's not true, is it? That first night. The apartment. You thought about it."
"No," he said hoarsely. "I wanted it. I needed you. I mean, I would have done it if it had just been sex, but dammit, you were—do you understand? I looked at you and I wanted you. Not a lie. I wanted something real, not just—"
She remembered him pulling away and stalking to the window. Drinking his beer in convulsive gulps. Do they call cabs, your guys downstairs?
His choice. And again, the second time. She'd asked him back to the apartment. He'd—turned her down. She'd even been surprised by it. Hurt by it.
"I thought that this one time, at least, I could make a decision for myself. But I couldn't. They took it away from me."
"Oh, God. Ben, what's in the envelope?"
"Proof that I'm no longer necessary in all this."
"Show me."
He opened the envelope. There were pictures inside. She saw him look down at them, and he made a sound, an animal groan of pain, and slid down the door to a crouch. Staring at the photos. Shuffling through them. "You bastards," he whispered. "They made these for me. Just to show me how little I matter. How they can take everything away." She couldn't stand it. She lunged forward and grabbed for them. He moved, lightning-quick, and took hold of her forearms, pulling her down to her knees.
The photos spilled over the concrete floor between them, glowing in the lurid red light. Black-and-white photos, taken from above. Grainy, as if ripped from a surveillance feed.
A woman lying on a white hospital-style bed, wearing a loose gown.
Knees up. Feet in stirrups. Some kind of medical procedure. Some kind of…
Lucia cried out and buried her face in McCarthy's shoulder. In his warmth and strength. He kissed the top of her head and rocked her, and she twisted to stare at the photos again, silent now.
The stroking of his hand on her hair was almost hypnotic. "It's all a game to them. Percentages," he said. "Anthrax to get you sick and vulnerable, and keep you running scared. They'd planned to check you into the hospital and get it done there, but Eidolon kept disrupting things, forcing their hand. I didn't carry through on getting you in bed, but it didn't matter, they had a backup plan. When you finally did collapse, when you were unguarded—they took you."
She stared at the photographs. The details of an invasion of her body, clinically photographed.
"I dreamed," she murmured. "I dreamed of lights… This was it, wasn't it? It wasn't all treatments for the anthrax. The feeling of violation."
He didn't answer. There didn't seem much point, she supposed. It was right there, in the pictures. The doctors with their tools and their completely scientific rape of her body. "How many times?" She felt as if there was a huge weight on her lungs, suffocating her. Like the old wives' tale of waking with the cat on her chest, stealing her breath. This could not be true. Could not be happening.
"I don't know. As many as it took to make sure, I suppose." His voice sounded raw. Bloody. "You're just a tool, Lucia. Just a body and a genetic code and a place in history, standing where they need somebody to stand, for the greater good." The weight of sarcasm he gave the last two words made her shiver. "And our baby's going to be exactly the same."
She stirred and looked up. Her hair had fallen over her face, and she pulled it back out of the way. "Our baby?" He kissed her. Not on the lips, on the forehead. A burning kiss of anguish and apology. "I can't be sure without a DNA test, but yeah. They took sperm samples during the tests in the prison hospital, before they told me what I was supposed to do. That
was what they wanted from me. Pretty much all they ever wanted. Their backup plan, in case I— got difficult about things. I guess just anybody wouldn't do. Had to be me."
They sat in silence, surrounded by the fallen photographs, wrapped around each other for comfort, until Jazz rapped on the door and asked if everything was okay in there.
Lucia straightened, wiped her face free of moisture, and forced a smile to her lips. McCarthy, bleached of color by the lights, looked awful. She didn't expect she looked any better. "Nobody else needs to know," she said. "You and me. Nobody else."
"Jazz—"
"No. Nobody. Promise me."
"I promise." He gave her a wan, empty smile. "The least I can do."
"No," she said. "The least you can do is think of yourself. Whatever that is. Leave. Stay. Hate me. Love me. Do what's in your heart, Ben. Whatever that is, just do it. Quit making decisions based on what you think I want."
His eyes opened wider, and for a second he didn't move or speak. She wasn't sure if he was thinking or just feeling stunned. And then, without saying a word, he kissed her. A hot, damp, desperate kiss, tasting of tears. Wild, distilled passion. His hands rose to cup the back of her head, urging her closer, and his tongue nudged her lips apart.
She let him in.
Our choice, she thought, with what little conscious thought she had in that moment. One pure thing. Just one.
He broke the kiss with a tearing gasp and buried his face in the hollow of her neck. The moan that came out of him moved through her like a holy visitation.
"What the hell was that?" she asked, shaky.
"What I want."
She wanted to stay there forever, in the safe red light, suspended in the warmth of this moment, but she reached down and scraped the pictures together, and slid them into the envelope. He straightened up and put his hands on her shoulders, then her face. Thumb tracing her damp, swollen lips.
"Make it your choice, Lucia. Let them chew on that." She held the proof of her weakness in her hands, and the proof of her strength in her heart. "We will," she said.
They were all staring when she and McCarthy returned. Jazz opened her mouth to ask, but Lucia stopped her with a look. "Our business," she said. "It's nothing to do with anybody else. Right, Sirnms?"
He cocked his head to one side. "As you wish."
"I want this over. I want us out of your business, the Cross Society's business, Eidolon's business."
"That's never going to happen," Simms said, "as long as the Cross Society and Eidolon are in operation. Especially now." He gave her midsection a fast but significant glance. She sat down at the table and put the envelope in front of her. A silent reminder of just how high the stakes were now.
"Then we shut them down. All of them."
"You can't," Borden argued. "The Cross Society does do good, you know that! Look how many people you've saved because of the leads they gave you. You can't just—"
McCarthy, who hadn't spoken, turned toward him, fists clenched.
"What, now you want to beat on me?" Borden cried. "Fine. Let's go. I'm sick of your macho cop bullshit—"
"James, don't," Jazz said. For her, the response was mild.
"Yeah, James, don't," McCarthy echoed. "Be a good little lawyer and shut the hell up about what doesn't concern you."
"Back off, Ben." Jazz was up, suddenly, standing between them. "You want to take whatever this is out on somebody, hell, bring it on, I'd love to kick somebody's ass today. Might as well be yours. I'm pissed as hell at you, anyway."
"I don't need you to fight for me, Jazz!" Borden spat.
"Against Ben? You're kidding, right?" She held up her hands and backed out of the way. "Fine. You guys arm wrestle for biggest jerk in the room. Let us know who comes out on top. We've got bigger problems than this."
She was deadly serious. The tension in the room cranked steadily higher.
"Now." She turned back to Lucia. "You were saying…?"
Simms, significantly, perhaps, hadn't said a word. He wasn't watching the brewing confrontation. His eyes hadn't left Lucia, but she had a sudden eerie feeling that he was seeing through her, beyond her, into some limitless and terrifying distance.
What did I just change?
"You're a constant," Simms said slowly. "Eidolon would like to kill you, but there's no time line I can see in which you don't survive and—" he caught himself and glanced at the others " — and carry out the task that the Cross Society intended. In other words, unlike the rest of us, your fate is assured, Ms. Garza."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning that you are a fulcrum upon which we can move the world." He looked grim suddenly. Tired, and every moment of his age, "You can do anything you want to do. And I hope you understand how grave a responsibility that is. I created Eidolon to help me understand what I was seeing, to right some of the wrongs in this world. And I learned that when you act with knowledge, fate reacts against you. The more good we did, the more evil there was, as if it was being bred specifically to counter us, like antibodies. I wanted to stop. I established the Cross Society to work at cross-purposes to Eidolon, to try to undo some of the terrible consequences." He sagged further in his seat. "The world works on balance. I understand that now. There can be no greater good, because once it is greater, it is no longer good."
They were all silent, watching him.
"There is something you can do," Simms said. "Destroy it. Bring it down. You are the only one who can do that."
Borden shot up again, eyes wide. "You can't."
"She can. She will. More than that, Mr. Borden, she should."
"I can't be part of destroying the Cross Society!"
"Don't have to," Jazz said. "Eidolon's the one who's got the upper hand. We go after them, right, Simms?"
He nodded. "Right."
"Problem solved." Jazz stood up. "L. Ben. Let's get busy."
Borden moved toward her. Intimately close, trying to hold her eyes. "What about me?"
She put a hand flat on his chest. "Your decision," she said. "I love you. I want to be with you. But you have to choose now, because I'm not going to be a cog in somebody else's machine the rest of my life. We're expendable to them, and personally, I don't consider you expendable at all."
He hesitated, and with a heart-stoppingly tender gesture, covered her fingers with his own. Jazz was not a small woman, but his hand dwarfed hers.
"Quit," she said. "Quit the damn Society. Please, Borden."
He bent forward and kissed her. A long, thorough, sweet kiss, as if there was nobody else in the room.
"I have to fight for what I believe in," Borden said.
"Even if the guy who founded it doesn't believe anymore. I can't change my heart that easily. I'm sorry."
Jazz blinked. For a second there were tears in her eyes, and in the next, they were gone, drained away, and something hard and unyielding had replaced them.
"Me, too," she said, and shoved him away with an explosion of force. He staggered back, hit the pillar behind him and rebounded. She sidestepped, added momentum with a straight arm across his shoulder blades, and he sprawled facedown across the table. Jazz stepped in, grabbed his left wrist and twisted it up, then patted her pockets absently. "Dammit. Anybody got handcuffs?"
Any of them might have—Ben, Jazz, Lucia—but instead, it was Pansy Taylor, looking rumpled and fresh from bed, wrapped in a robe, who walked in on bare feet and tossed a gleaming set of police issue on the table.
"I don't think I even want to know," McCarthy said.
"Morning." Pansy yawned, and watched as Jazz snapped handcuffs on her former boss. "What's going on?"
"End of the world," McCarthy said. He was still sitting, head propped on his hand, watching as Borden squirmed and struggled.
"Oh," Pansy said. "Just checking. Coffee, then?"
"Yeah, all around. Better get a straw for Borden."
"Screw you, McCarthy," Borden panted. Jazz grabbed him by the handcuffs and got him upright, then seated. "
Dammit, Jazz, you can't keep me here like this."
"Sure, I can," she stated. "And later on, we'll talk about better ways to handle our relationship issues, but for right now? Handcuffs work."
McCarthy laughed. A flush mounted in Borden's face, and Lucia thought that if he'd had superpowers, those handcuffs would be breaking like glass right about now.
But he didn't. You are a fulcrum upon which we can move the world. Lucia had the uncomfortable feeling that only one of them qualified today as a superhero, and she didn't like the thought.
"I have to make a phone call," she said.
Nobody commented. Jazz was too preoccupied with avoiding Borden's glares.
Lucia stood up and walked to an emptier corner of the vast warehouse space, away from the lights. Out on the perimeter, the feeling of loneliness increased. It was like leaving the orbit of the Earth, launching out into a cold and uncaring darkness.
She dialed a number on her cell phone, spoke her name very clearly after the beep and left a callback number. Exactly forty-five seconds after she'd hung up, her cell phone rang, and she flipped it open.
"This is an unexpected pleasure, my love," Gregory Ivanovich said. He did sound gratified.
"Did you take the pictures?"
Silence for a second. She might have actually succeeded in throwing him off.
"I captured them from surveillance, yes." No jokes. Gregory knew it wasn't a joking matter. "You know who is the father? I deeply regret to inform you it was not me."
"I need a favor."
She'd surprised him, again. "Are we so close that you should think I would give another favor, dorogaya? For nothing?"
"Not for nothing. Favor for favor. Yours to be named later, no questions asked."
"You'd put yourself in my debt?"
"Yes."
He considered it. "From anyone else, I would say that you would be lying to me, and that would be most unpleasant for both of us. But from my dear Lushenka I will grant the possibility you will keep your word. Very well. Favor for favor. What do you want?"
"An electromagnetic pulse device." If she'd thought she'd surprised him before, she'd been wrong. This was surprise, this long stretch of humming silence. He was on an airplane, she thought. Probably riding first class, luxuriating in leather seats, eating beluga caviar.
